A cautionary thread, #WritingCommunity #amwriting. My 5th title comes out Sunday. I'm an old hand at this, and I am part of a cooperative press with good people who take book quality seriously. But we are living in strange times. My copy editor has always been stellar.

So when they sent me a lengthy list of corrections - the usual duplicated or missed or wrong words, etc., I fixed them, assumed they'd done their job as well as they always had. Then I got my printed proof, and it was rife with errors my copy-editor had missed.

There have been many articles about how the stress of the pandemic destroys our ability to concentrate. I should have taken that seriously, but perhaps I too was having difficulty concentrating. I'm not blaming my copy-editor.

Hubs & I worked all weekend to find & fix the errors, and I will meet the deadlines to upload. I've talked to other writers whose editors are uncharacteristically missing mistakes too, and I'm wondering what I, wearing my editor's hat, am missing in the work I'm doing.

As COVID-19 drags on, we need to recognize how stress may manifest, even when we think we've done our usual good job. Work takes longer. Work needs double & triple checking. Most of all, we need to be kind to each other, & forgiving, and gentle.